Continues. . .
So if someone who knows about psychedelics looks at my book shelf, they are all there to see on the top shelf, for the curious. From the wacky to the sceptic. I am broadly informed but the collection does not necessarily reflect my opinion. I wouldn't want them to think I was a full on Ayahuasca exponent for example, with all the ritualistic belief systems and paraphernalia. I have read plenty about it, and went as far as visiting a Shaman outside Iquitos in Peru to experience an authentic setting. I greatly respect it on a cultural level, and my Peruvian encounter reflected the setting and it's archetypes. But it wasn't my own culture. My first literary Yage encounter was courtesy of W.S Burroughs. I have used Ayahuasca and some analogues a few times. I prefer to use Moclobemide instead of plant MAOI and synthetic DMT to reach an Ayahuasca like head-space now, avoiding the unpredictable and sometimes quite gruelling side effects of the original. I know there is some kind of sublime lesson happening during the purge sometimes. Stages of initial resistance and fear, gradually replaced by acceptance and perhaps even peace with the immanent irresistible barfing that will soon follow. And then when it sometimes lasts for minutes, you have time to think a myriad or parallel consecutive thoughts during a single retch. At that point some remarkably resilient part of my mind is still chuckling at my predicament, and the innate comedy of existence.
I prefer a gentler ride usually. I don't object to extreme mental phenomenon too much, having managed to mostly accept and ride out heavier moments. A whole load of psycho-babble type cliches spring to mind such as: 'There is nothing to fear but fear itself', amongst others. I like to think on lyrics from the Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows', themselves taken from Leary/Alpert/Metzner's 'The Psychedelic Experience'. My preferred materials provide me with plenty/enough to think about.
I pre-ordered Pinchbeck's second book, but felt in all honesty that he'd gone from one extreme to another. I couldn't help feeling it described a slide away from rationality and heightened awareness toward a kind ofself centred mania. The last part of the book concerned a great deal of 'Channelling' and doom-saying, particularly with regard to predictions of great change from 2012 onwards. With respect, I'm not holding my breath, although the year is still young.
Other authors in the field I have read include Stanislav Grof, who has pioneered forms of LSD psychotherapy. Many of his ideas appealed to me on an intuitive level, but I have a problem with past life experience claims. I just find that, as with most paranormal claims, to my mind, if there were verifiable and repeatable evidence, they would long since have been dissected by scientific method. This is not always the case, but just in an overwhelming proportion of cases. The remaider are, to paraphrase Arthur C Clark, forms of science which we as yet do not understand. His ideas seem underpinned by an assumption of truth regarding some slightly empirically dubious hypotheses. And yet I have to acknowledge a mental place that is beyond the deterministic external reality. As stated before, I just think you can't bring anything back from it that violates the parameters of normal external reality. I do believe you can feel like you have been extremely close, adjacent even. I have had many experiences that have hinted tantalisingly at that. Because I like LSD, although I'm seldom fortunate enough to acquire it, I gave Grof a fair reading. The books aren't that cheap, but I was not massively smitten. The psychotherapy approach was interesting and applicable to some of the emotional housework I sometimes do with chemical assistance.
If you did persevere with all that you are in my cool book. If not, I understand. Anyway I can rattle on about my obsession to my hearts content here it seems. Sometime my posts will be long and rambling, like the above. Other times they are liable to be colourful and hopefully interesting, like when I try a new material, or something else sparks my enthusiasms. Part of my reason for writing is to help me formulate my ideas, so I must apologise for inconsistencies over time.
Peace - Pipp
So if someone who knows about psychedelics looks at my book shelf, they are all there to see on the top shelf, for the curious. From the wacky to the sceptic. I am broadly informed but the collection does not necessarily reflect my opinion. I wouldn't want them to think I was a full on Ayahuasca exponent for example, with all the ritualistic belief systems and paraphernalia. I have read plenty about it, and went as far as visiting a Shaman outside Iquitos in Peru to experience an authentic setting. I greatly respect it on a cultural level, and my Peruvian encounter reflected the setting and it's archetypes. But it wasn't my own culture. My first literary Yage encounter was courtesy of W.S Burroughs. I have used Ayahuasca and some analogues a few times. I prefer to use Moclobemide instead of plant MAOI and synthetic DMT to reach an Ayahuasca like head-space now, avoiding the unpredictable and sometimes quite gruelling side effects of the original. I know there is some kind of sublime lesson happening during the purge sometimes. Stages of initial resistance and fear, gradually replaced by acceptance and perhaps even peace with the immanent irresistible barfing that will soon follow. And then when it sometimes lasts for minutes, you have time to think a myriad or parallel consecutive thoughts during a single retch. At that point some remarkably resilient part of my mind is still chuckling at my predicament, and the innate comedy of existence.
I prefer a gentler ride usually. I don't object to extreme mental phenomenon too much, having managed to mostly accept and ride out heavier moments. A whole load of psycho-babble type cliches spring to mind such as: 'There is nothing to fear but fear itself', amongst others. I like to think on lyrics from the Beatles' 'Tomorrow Never Knows', themselves taken from Leary/Alpert/Metzner's 'The Psychedelic Experience'. My preferred materials provide me with plenty/enough to think about.
I pre-ordered Pinchbeck's second book, but felt in all honesty that he'd gone from one extreme to another. I couldn't help feeling it described a slide away from rationality and heightened awareness toward a kind ofself centred mania. The last part of the book concerned a great deal of 'Channelling' and doom-saying, particularly with regard to predictions of great change from 2012 onwards. With respect, I'm not holding my breath, although the year is still young.
Other authors in the field I have read include Stanislav Grof, who has pioneered forms of LSD psychotherapy. Many of his ideas appealed to me on an intuitive level, but I have a problem with past life experience claims. I just find that, as with most paranormal claims, to my mind, if there were verifiable and repeatable evidence, they would long since have been dissected by scientific method. This is not always the case, but just in an overwhelming proportion of cases. The remaider are, to paraphrase Arthur C Clark, forms of science which we as yet do not understand. His ideas seem underpinned by an assumption of truth regarding some slightly empirically dubious hypotheses. And yet I have to acknowledge a mental place that is beyond the deterministic external reality. As stated before, I just think you can't bring anything back from it that violates the parameters of normal external reality. I do believe you can feel like you have been extremely close, adjacent even. I have had many experiences that have hinted tantalisingly at that. Because I like LSD, although I'm seldom fortunate enough to acquire it, I gave Grof a fair reading. The books aren't that cheap, but I was not massively smitten. The psychotherapy approach was interesting and applicable to some of the emotional housework I sometimes do with chemical assistance.
If you did persevere with all that you are in my cool book. If not, I understand. Anyway I can rattle on about my obsession to my hearts content here it seems. Sometime my posts will be long and rambling, like the above. Other times they are liable to be colourful and hopefully interesting, like when I try a new material, or something else sparks my enthusiasms. Part of my reason for writing is to help me formulate my ideas, so I must apologise for inconsistencies over time.
Peace - Pipp